Hiemalis
by Liothe
Summary: [Slash - H/D] Hiemalis - adj. - of winter, wintry, stormy; in botany, winter-blooming.
1. Exsibilo

**Author:** Starhawk

**Disclaimer:** If I was JKR, I wouldn't _need_ to write fanfiction.

**Rating:** PG (?)

**Summary:**_ "It was the first thing his father had ever told him;_ [feelings are weakness, use them in others, eradicate them in yourself.] _Joy can break you, his father said. As high as you go up is also as far as you go down; the amplitude is the same either direction, and if one doesn't go up at all, then one can't come down and shatter."_

**Warning:** The only beta is my computer spellcheck. This prologue thingy is written kinda weirdly, a little bit stream-of-consciousness-ish, and I know that the "wall" metaphor goes on waaaay too long. So sue me. Oh, and eventual slash. H/D. 'Nuff said.

**Feedback:** Makes my world go 'round, dear reader. In other words: please? insert Bambi eyes Pretty please?

**[¤ Hiemalis ¤]**

_[Prologue: Exsibilo]_

He had always hated the voice.

He remembered once, a very long time ago. It had come in the middle of dinner, right when Father was talking about Mudbloods and Mother was smiling that plastic smile and he was partway through his third chocolate snatched from the sweets bowl without anyone noticing. It had been very low, and very angry, and very like a hiss, and it had made Father wince and clutch his arm before Apparating away. That was the first time he could ever remember hearing it, this hateful serpent's voice.

It had come again, the next year, in his room. Father was tucking him in, and the voice had come from all around, and hissed and slithered how pleased it was with "the boy." He had tried not to whimper, though the voice terrified him, with its everywhere-at-once-ness and its cold, mocking ice. And the voice noticed his silence, and then there was a laugh like boiling oil on ice, like pain on slate, that made the small hairs on the back of his neck want to run up and hide in his eyebrows.

Of course, they couldn't; even though his hair was all the same bleached platinum shade as Father's, his eyebrows had to be slim and precise, little blades ready to twist up and deride, to slice through jokes and laughter and make everyone around him as cold as he felt inside. Naturally, they weren't supposed to know that he felt cold; they weren't supposed to know he felt at all.

It was the first thing his father had ever told him; _[feelings are weakness, use them in others, eradicate them in yourself.]_ Joy can break you, his father said. As high as you go up is also as far as you go down; the amplitude is the same either direction, and if one doesn't go up at all, then one can't come down and shatter. His father told him that falling smashed things, and he'd gone up to his room and dropped a ball out the window, and it had bounced. That was the beginning, the very first moment he had stopped believing everything his father said. He learned that his father had left something out: falling shattered _brittle_ things. He thought perhaps his father was brittle – that must be why he was never happy, because he though he'd fall and break, and why he never smiled; the expression would crack him apart.

Well, no, that was wrong. His father did smile, but it was a false good humor like an old rubber band: stretch it too far, and it snaps. It was not a real smile in the normal sense of the word. It was a smile that made him want to shiver. Except shivering meant one felt, and feelings made one hurt and weak and easy prey for people like Father. People like him, too, really. All he'd ever wanted was to be like Father, except for the day of the ball and the window. He didn't really know what else to want.

He had a sense of his mother's place in their house, and the vaguest feeling that other people's mothers were different. But the Manor took up a lot of ground, and their neighbors were too far away to be friendly with, in both the physical and the emotional sense of the words. His mother was a trinket. A mannequin, perhaps. A big, posable, talking doll that went on display. She talked to Father's acquaintances – none of them were close enough to be _friend_ – and laughed in all the right places; she showed them around the Manor, and was coolly gracious and elegantly poised. Before every party, every banquet and ball, she would sit in her room in front of her vanity, combing and curling and twisting and pinning. _[Should it cascade over the left shoulder, or be pinned up in braids in the back?]_ she would ask her mirror. She had little else to do but powder and brush, paint and gloss.

Father would certainly never leave her in charge of anything important. That simply wasn't the way it worked.

Mother was a very good wife, compared to some of the others he saw. And he grew up to notice the differences she showed him between matching dresses and shoes, and slightly clashing ones. She showed him that Madame Goyle had been foolish to leave her hair loosely curling over her right shoulder, because the brooch and pin at the shoulder of her gown was on that side, and that Monsieur Nott had obviously not been thinking when he had put the horseshoe geranium, symbolizing stupidity, in his _boutonnière_. She taught him to observe little mistakes; to examine appearances; to spread the sort of rumor where no one knows where it started; to pick up on small, subtle insults, and return some of his own.

Father taught him things too, of course. He was lucky that he was a quick student of French – he had noticed the ruler his father kept nearby on the first day, and took great pains to avoid letting it meet his palm or back. Semiannually, the voice would come, murmuring its serpentine pleasure at his progress, and eventually he learned how to keep his face and body still of the shivers that threatened to shake them. He learned how to make people feel stupid and humbled, how to seem imposing, and make his anger cold so that it rolled off him and lent his voice frozen steel, but didn't take him over like hot anger did.

That was the thing people misunderstood about his family. Everyone thought they were flashy showoffs, with nothing to do but spend money. He understood better, though, because he was on the inside, and his family was all about frost and slow chill working its way through one's bones. That was another thing he felt that other families weren't like, but there was no one for him to share it with, and so he hid it away like a book in the attic, and let the dust settle on the top.

His father also showed him how to make his face a wall, and he found he could hide a great many things behind that wall; his anger, his boredom, his pain, but especially his revulsion for the soft, hissing voice that visited so often. His anger was slow and cool, the flow of a glacier, at his father and his mother and the walls, the real ones, that held him inside and kept him away from the grass and the sun and the other things he was sure that other little boys had. It grew into a general loathing for those other little boys who had what he did not, but that was so slow over time that he hardly noticed it.

His boredom was worse. No matter whether a child has or has not played outside, their favorite activity will never be sitting around with their backs straight (of course) and their feet flat (of course). And he found at first that his boredom was so great it wouldn't fit behind the wall. It would slide out into his feet, and make them tap against the floor, and into his legs, and make them swing back and forth. So he lengthened and strengthened and worked on his wall, until even he wasn't sure there was anything behind it but anger and boredom and pain.

That was why he had hated the boy.

He met the boy in the robe shop, before the first school year started. He had seen the boy outside the shop, with his smiling and his laughter and his bright-eyed liking-life, and it had startled him. Here was a little boy who had played outside the walls, and gotten grass stains on his shirt, and dirt under his fingernails. Not that _he_ knew what grass stains were. His fingernails (and his shirts, for that matter) were always very clean. He hadn't hated the boy at first. He thought that the boy's wall was perhaps not quite so wall-like, and he had wanted to ask how the boy could exist without a wall as big as his own.

Except he couldn't really ask _that_. He couldn't make the words fit into his question. So he asked different questions, and watched the boy's face, and saw _[his mother]_ that the boy's clothes didn't match, and saw _[his father]_ that the boy wasn't afraid of him. And then, suddenly, he saw a odd, odd thing. The boy's wall didn't have anger, or boredom, or pain behind it.

The boy didn't _have_ a wall.

He had been rather rude after that, because it frightened and confused and startled him. How could anyone live without a proper wall? Wouldn't his father be angry? _[He said his parents were dead.]_ Wouldn't he just feel silly, though, letting all those emotions run rampant over his face? A glance at the other boy's expression could certainly tell _him _everything. _[But other little boys aren't like you,]_ something beyond the wall told him. _[Other little boys laugh and cry and run around. You sit like stone, with your back straight (of course) and your feet flat (of course).]_

He stopped listening to the beyond-the-wall. After all, it told him things, strange things, and he couldn't hide from it quite as well as he could hide from the hissing whisper that he hated.

So he'd left the shop, and waited out the days until school _[sitting like stone (of course)]_ at the Manor. Finally, they had driven to the station, and he had passed through the barrier. That day was a blur of boredom in his mind – his wall was not so solid, with the confusion in him. That was what had led him to seek out the wall-less boy, and, without the careful thinking cautiousness his father had shown him, he had asked for this boy to be _friend_ to him.

And the boy had turned him away with disgust in his face and the beginnings of hatred bitter in his voice. No one had ever spoken to him that way. Very few people had ever spoken to him at all. So he'd gone away, back to his own seat, to think and work through this confusion. Except then it had occurred to him that confusion meant feeling. Nothing had ever made him feel except the hiss. And so he panicked, and shoved the confusion away behind the wall, and never touched it again. He left it to gather dust with his suspicions and his angers, and when the time had come to be Sorted, he had twisted the wall into a smirk and left it there.

But then the Hat asked him what he wanted, and he thought it like a prayer: _[I want to be like Father.]_ And the Hat had asked him why, and he'd said, _[I want to be like Father.]_ because he didn't understand this "why," no one bothered to ask _him_ why. The Hat had shouted _[Slytherin!]_ and then he knew he was like Father.

But any pride he felt at that was caught behind the wall, and somewhere in his head, the hiss said, _[Ah, such a good little boy, just like his father.]_ And the thing beyond-the-wall, the thing that he ignored, knew without a doubt that he'd never really wanted that at all.

Just like he'd never really wanted his wall.


	2. Tempestatis

**Author:** Starhawk

**Disclaimer:** What, you actually think I can make _money_ off this? I wish I had that kind of imagination.

**Rating:** PG (?)

**Summary:**_ "__They did the right thing for no other reason than the fact that it was, indeed, the right thing to do. Draco Malfoy didn't do that. He did what was deeply instilled in him, as well, but what was deeply instilled in him wasn't morality."_

**Warning:** The only beta is still my computer spellcheck; there isn't anybody to tell me if I'm being really stupid or whatever. Still eventual slash, too. H/D. wonders how many times she'll have to say that

**Feedback:** Like it, hate it, it puts you to sleep; whatever it is, lemme know! Please?

**Author's Note:** Thanks a trillion, and a big cookie, to: 

**beautifulelf:** Thanks, that's sweet! Um, I dunno whether this counts as a sequel, but here it is . . .

**lela:** Well, gosh, I've always wanted to hear that ("no constructive criticism . . .")! Thankies!

**mistykasumi:** Yup, that's kinda what I was aiming for. Thanks for the review!

**Jastin:** Wow. I'm gonna be blushing for the rest of my life. ^_^

**RainShadow:** Succinct, yet everything I wanted to hear. J

Thanks again to my reviewers, I absolutely love you for taking the time to totally make my day!

_[Part I: Tempestatis]_

_The waves crash in, the tide rolls out;  
It's an angry sea but there's no doubt  
That the lighthouse will keep shining out,  
To warn a lonely sailor . . ._

"Where's Malfoy?"

"-not at the table-"

"-haven't seen him?"

"He was on the train-"

"He was?"

"-_thought_ I saw him-"

"What's going on?" Hermione asked Seamus, who was busy tilting his chair backwards so he could hear Justin Finch-Fletchley.

"Why, Malfoy's not here. Nobody's seen him." Seamus responded, apparently unaware of the fact that his seat was at a very dangerous angle. "'S weird. You'd think Malfoy would be early, if for no better reason than to spend as much time as possible sitting around poking at his food."

"What?" Harry queried.

"What, you didn't notice? Last year, I think all he ate was a carrot and some mashed potatoes. Looked like a skeleton all term." Seamus replied, turning his attention to Dean, and letting the chair fall back into place with a low thud.

"Not surprising, with the war on," Hermione added. "After all, his family must be under a lot of pressure-"

"Might I have your attention?" Dumbledore's voice wasn't amplified, but the hall went quiet quickly. "I understand there have been some rumors and questions concerning Mr. Malfoy's absence. Unfortunately, he won't be attending the feast. He had to attend his father's funeral, and won't be arriving until tomorrow."

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_The boy was disturbing, if for no other reason than the fact that he wasn't crying. The driver took pity on him._

_"How're you doin', son?"_

_He was fixed to his seat by flat grey eyes. [Like a stone wall.] "Fine, sir, thank you." No expression. Nothing. Just emotionless mist._

_Suddenly he pitied the boy for a far better reason than a family funeral._

_He forgot the boy was there, after a while. Kid wasn't like his mother, with presence that demanded attention and care. What was that fancy word Bet's boy, the one in college, had used? Self-effacing, that was it. The boy was self-effacing. He just sat there in the back seat, and even though he was looking out the window, his eyes weren't moving. They were focused on something else._

_Somewhere else._

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"Headmaster."

Every head in the hall turned. They had all just finished their mutterings about Malfoys and funerals when the doors had swung open and revealed a slim pale figure in black robes.

"Mr. Malfoy. You're back early. How are you feeling?"

Malfoy glanced around the hall uncertainly. Every single pairs of eyes was on him, and not even Weasley was glaring. _[I've always read that exhaustion shows.]_ "Tired, I suppose."

Dumbledore watched him with that little sparkle in his eyes. "Go to the Infirmary, Mr. Malfoy. The house elves can bring you some supper, but you ought to rest."

_[It's like having a real father.]_ "Thank you, sir." _[I forgot to sound irritated. Alas.]_ He backed away from all those pitying eyes, watching him with a new sort of not-judging look that made the wall's foundations shudder. _[Oh, please,]_ he scolded the exhaustion that would let the wall fall. _[They wouldn't look twice at you that way if your father wasn't dead.]_ Shoving the Great Hall's doors shut with a boom, he paused for a moment to listen to the echoes. _[Just like Father, isn't it. Shut away, but his echoes are everywhere.]_ Malfoy turned (it made it easier to think of himself as Malfoy, you see; made the wall stronger) and took only a few steps before a creak and sudden light from the Hall silhouetting him made him turn back again.

"Blaise."

"Couldn't wait to get away from your family again, huh?" The other boy's eyes twinkled – one could almost imagine he was from Ravenclaw or Gryffindor.

"How ever did you know?" Here was the one person who could see behind the wall, without fear of retribution.

"Well, otherwise, you'd be milking this for all it's worth with some grand, weepy entrance tomorrow. True Malfoy style and all." Blaise walked the few strides it took to catch up with him.

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"You can go back to the banquet, Blaise," Malfoy murmured, seating himself on the edge of the nearest Infirmary bed.

"Why do you always sit like that?"

"Like what?"

_[With your back straight . . .]_ "I mean, don't you ever relax?"

"Relax?"

Blaise threw up his hands. "Forget it. And, no, I'm not going back down there. For one thing, my face hurts from sneering, and for another, you," and he jabbed Malfoy in the chest, "need somebody to talk to. I volunteer to sacrifice myself to your selfish whims."

Malfoy sighed, a little smile tugging at the corners of his too-straight mouth. Blaise watched him for a moment. _[Can't possibly be healthy to smile that little. Merlin.]_

"I just . . . I don't know. It feels . . . like a lie."

"A lie?"

"You know." Malfoy blew an ungelled strand of hair out of his face, a surprisingly uncultured gesture that Blaise knew he'd never make around anyone else. "Like there are all those people sitting down there, feeling sorry for me and vowing to themselves that they'll try to tolerate me because my father's dead and I must be _so sad_, when I really couldn't care less." He lay down, staring at the ceiling. "Who's _like_ that, Blaise? Who else is there who doesn't care when their _father_ dies?"

Blaise glanced at him. "What, you mean that guy who's around just long enough to shove you into a couple walls, and maybe slap you a few times, before he has to go suck up to He-Who-Must-Need-A-Bath? Well, gosh, I always thought his death would really break your heart."

The door creaked. _[Madam Pomfrey.]_

"Goodnight, Blaise," Malfoy said, with all due stiffness.

"Goodnight." Blaise passed Madam Pomfrey on the way out, nodding coolly.

"Mr. Malfoy. I had the elves bring up some soup . . ." He tuned her out, nodding occasionally to assure her that he was still listening.

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_"It wasn't my fault! I didn't-"_

_"**Shut up!**" The words were followed by a slap. He could almost taste the blood where he'd bitten his cheek. He scrambled backwards until his back struck the wall. A foot landed itself in his stomach; he curled reflexively, trying to keep the contents of his stomach in place. He'd have bruises there tomorrow, and probably on his face, with his luck._

_"Please-"_

_"Begging?" His father leaned down, face filling his bleary vision. "It doesn't suit Malfoys-"_

He woke abruptly, with a gasp. He sat up. He'd rolled down to the foot of his bed, and there was blood on the footboard. _[That explains the slap.]_ He swallowed, tasting copper and salt. _[I can't stay in here.]_ Malfoy rose, noting that he probably looked like a ghost in the white Infirmary robe Madame Pomfrey had forced on him before she left. The thought seemed strange, and he laughed, until it occurred to him that everyone had always said he looked like Father. Then it felt more like hysterics than laughter. _[Look like Father, look like a ghost, no difference any more, is there?]_

He wandered down the halls, paying no particular attention to where he was going. Usually, it paid off socially to be seen with certain people in certain places at certain times, _[but there really isn't any point anymore.]_ He found himself a window in a long-abandoned room, and sat on the sill, with his back bent forward, and his feet arched up.

_[No point. No Father to please, no footsteps to follow, nobody making sure you're following them at all. No point to anything anymore.]_ He thought about Blaise. _[He believes I'm free now. He thinks it's a gift, to be uncontrolled by expectations and do what you like. What if you don't know what you like? I've spent my whole life having him tell me what I like, and now that he's gone . . . Who am I without him?]_

That question occupied him for several hours, as he sat there watching the moon move. _[Who am I without him?]_ And at the end of the night, when he noticed that there were less stars, and that the dark blue sky wasn't quite so dark a blue as it had been before, he had only one answer.

_[Nobody.]_

Which seemed to be true in the way that very painful things are true. And he went back to the Infirmary, with _[nobody]_ ringing in his ears like the echoes of the Hall doors closing, like the echoes of his father's coffin falling shut, and this time there wasn't any Blaise to walk with him.

So he walked alone.

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_Draco Malfoy had always known that he worked somewhat differently from other people. He hadn't really had any sense of what the difference was until he had met Potter, though. He had realized it one afternoon, after Potter had snatched him back from the clacking pincers of death in the form of one of Hagrid's creatures. Weasley had been shocked, and the least bit disappointed – "Couldn't you have just let him get-" Granger had interrupted him, the image of righteous dismay. "Ron! That's a terrible thing to say!"_

_And he had figured it out, in one of those blinding flashes of inspiration, where something that's been nagging one for a while suddenly fits together. Potter, and all those other fools, they all acted out of morals. They had a deep sense of right and wrong; they felt badly when they did wrong, and so they didn't do it often. They did the right thing for no other reason than the fact that it was, indeed, the right thing to do._

_Draco Malfoy didn't do that._

_He did what was deeply instilled in him, as well, but what was deeply instilled in him wasn't morality. His conscience wasn't really conscience, it was common sense. Don't let others be hurt if you can prevent it; not because it was wrong to do otherwise, but because they might be useful to you later. Don't become drunk; not because it is wrong, but because you should not put yourself in situations where you are not in control, in case others take advantage of you. It was all about control for Draco Malfoy._

_Not ethics. Not morals. Not right-wrong._

_Control._

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He couldn't fall asleep. It was a childish problem, and he felt ashamed of himself for allowing it to happen, but shame didn't tend to help one fall asleep. So he sat in his ghostly gown, with the white sheets pulled up to his waist, and watched the moonlight continue to tiptoe across the floor. There was no one else in the hospital wing; the moonlight crept across each empty bed, making the white sheets glow with pale luminescence. Malfoy noted absently that the light seemed to slow as it glided over his bed, like it wasn't sure what the boy was doing there.

Finally the soft rays fell square on him. He felt like part of the bed, with his face and his hair and his clothes so pale, and himself so still. He enjoyed it, in a way; it was like he wasn't Malfoy anymore, wasn't some git who no one could stand but everyone felt sorry for. He was just part of an inoffensive piece of furniture.

It was sitting thus that Harry Potter found him. And Malfoy wasn't sure, but he thought it had something to do with how he sat, and the way the light fell on him that made Potter so gentle.

"Is Madame Pomfrey here? Ron has a terrible headache, he can hardly move."

Malfoy would have laughed, but Potter looked incredibly tired. His hair was messier than usual, his eyes bleary, and his glasses were only on one ear. In any case, Malfoy wasn't feeling terribly spiteful. He thought it had something to do with not spoiling the last hour of moonlight he had before the sun rose, but he didn't want to linger on that fact.

"No. Unfortunately for you and your"- Malfoy struggled not to insult him-"friend, Madame Pomfrey is occupied like every other sane person in the world with being asleep."

Potter regarded him warily. "So, you admit you're not sane, then?" Potter's voice wasn't meant to be cruel – Potter simply wasn't like that – but it stung slightly. Malfoy had spent weeks that summer wondering if anyone could be sane when their father hated them and their mother ignored them and their house was big and empty and dead. Then he had remembered that feeling sorry for oneself was foolish and common, so he'd stopped.

And then Malfoy remembered that he was sitting on a white bed with Potter's eyes on him, halfway through their glasses. So he laughed, except it must have been bitter and sharp, because Potter flinched like he'd been struck. "Whoever claimed Malfoys were sane?" he asked.

Potter stared at him for a moment, with his eyes wide and unsettled-like, and slipped back out through the door without answering.

Malfoy laughed again, then, because some far off bit of him _[outside of the wall]_ knew that if he didn't, he'd start crying. _["One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets oneself be tamed . . ." Am I tamed, then, if I feel my tears rise as I find myself caught in the grey?]_

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_Yes, there were definitely certain things that other people didn't understand about her family._

_Narcissa knew what they looked like from the outside: a close-knit knot of snobs, with few better things to do than sneer and jeer at lesser folk. She also knew that it hadn't been that way at first._

_She had met Lucius in school. Their families had chosen the two of them as a perfect method in which to build an alliance, but Lucius had been rather cold and forbidding. Then there had been one different night; she had found him alone in a hallway, he had told her he wished she was free to love him if she chose, and then he had kissed her._

_They were in love then, but Narcissa thought now that it had simply been the product of two people, honed in the art of manufacturing emotion, forced to make the best of a hard situation. Lucius wasn't cruel to her, of course. He wasn't anything to her. He ignored her, mostly, but he was never unduly harsh. And she forgave him, really._

_It wasn't exactly his fault, she knew. His family had spent a good deal of time ensuring that he would never act on his emotions, and Narcissa wasn't entirely sure he had any left. He was bleached out, Lucius Malfoy was, bleached out. And Narcissa was convinced, now, that if she happened to see within him, through skin and flesh and bone, she would find his heart shriveled up and dead, the same hard platinum shade as his hair._

_It hadn't always been that way, she recalled. The first time she had met Lucius, his hair had been a fine, wheat-field gold. Over the years, though, before he was even twenty, it had straightened and lightened until it was silver. To Narcissa, it had seemed to be the only outward sign of an inner change that had turned Lucius Malfoy from a man into a machine._

_Draco had come along soon enough, a fine male heir to the Malfoy name and reputation. Lucius had told her that Draco had a face built for sneering – she often wondered if it were built for sneering simply because it had never been shown how to do anything else. She had caught Lucius slapping the boy one day; she had thought that it would frighten her, but she had felt very little: only a vague irritation, and a mild sense of regret, had stirred her. Lucius had looked up at her then, she remembered, and she saw in his face that he wasn't doing it for anger, or out of resignation or frustration. He was simply doing it because that was the way he remembered it being done._

_Being with Lucius had taken something out of her. Hell, just being Lucius at all had taken something out of **him**. But, in some perverse way, she felt that it was best that way, that they be together with their inner nothingness. It matched. She only hoped, abstractly, that the two of them together with their voided souls didn't take the living out of Draco, too. She hoped it wasn't too late already. He could be saved, she thought. She and Lucius had nearly saved each other, then, back when his hair was gold and his smiles meant something, but both of them had been a little too close to empty. [If only Draco could find someone. Someone full, full of other people's admiration and caring, who doesn't mind sharing a little.]_

_Some people might wonder why Narcissa stayed. **Narcissa** sometimes wondered why Narcissa stayed. But she'd figured out two things that might answer all her questions. One: she had nowhere else to go, and given the option between a mediocre life at the Manor, and an uncertain life in an unknown place that could tip to either side of the line between good and bad . . . Narcissa had never been adventurous. She was quiet, mostly, cool and reserved, and she liked the safe way through. That was probably what had gotten her to Lucius; he was the safe way through._

_The second thing was the hint of a feeling, that tugged at her chest sometimes. It came when she thought of leaving; it came when she looked at Lucius in the sunlight, and his hair seemed golden again; it came when she looked out at the Manor fields in the fall, and saw the wheat-grass swaying yellow._

_["The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."]_

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After Potter had fled, Malfoy watched the sun come up. The moonlight left him, and took with it his emotional clarity, and he was left sitting on the bed, realizing that Madame Pomfrey was going to be coming up to check on him. He had only just slid down beneath the covers and closed his eyes when he heard someone open the door, softly humming a cheery tune. He didn't recognize it. He heard her set something down at the foot of his bed, and caught a soft murmur of sound.

"-see it when he wakes up, poor boy-"

_[Feels like a lie.]_ He shifted uncomfortably. He had heard Blaise talk about this sort of thing sometimes, this "moral quandary," but it had never struck **him** with this twisting in his stomach and this dryness in his mouth. He rolled over, and pretended to awaken slowly.

"Ah, Mr. Malfoy! Feeling better?"

"I suppose, thank you." And suddenly, his memory and his mouth connected without asking his permission. "Potter was here last night; he said Weasley had a headache."

She regarded him with something in between a reprimanding glare and a curious glance. "That's Mr. Potter, and Mr. Weasley, to you. I know you don't harbor the kindest feelings toward either of them, but that's no reason to be rude."

He blinked. Was this what she said to him when he wasn't paying attention? "Of course."  
She smiled. "Now, there's breakfast down at the end of the bed. I'll go check on Mr. Weasley." She bustled out the door, looking extremely business-like. Blaise slipped in around the doorframe, watching the witch leave.

"Tell me you missed me."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. 

"I didn't say you had to mean it," Blaise shrugged, grinning a little.

"Well, all right then. I missed you."

Blaise laughed. _[Tell me, Blaise, tell me you don't laugh that way for anyone else. Tell me there's a reason I'm here, even if it's just so that you can laugh like that.]_ "How're you doing?"

Malfoy shrugged lightly. "Fine, I guess."

_[No, Draco, that's all wrong,]_ Blaise thought sadly. _[You don't feel fine. You don't feel anything at all. But you'd never say that out loud, of course, not even to me.]_ "Good." He eyed the tray, blue eyes critical. "I take it that's your breakfast?"

Malfoy shrugged again. "Doesn't matter. 'M not hungry."

Blaise glared rather sternly. "Oh, give it a rest. You starved enough last year." Malfoy didn't look at him. "Oh, you didn't think I'd noticed, did you? Well, you're wrong, and I'm telling you right now, if you don't eat every single thing on that plate, I'll shove the whole tray down your throat."

            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -

_It was one of those days._

_A grey, nasty, glum day, that made Lucius think of his son's eyes. There had to be something wrong with that, Lucius mused, being reminded of your child by flat, dead clouds. He knew, somehow, that he had been supposed to do this, to kill his son's living and make the boy slate. And he'd done it._

_But there was something wrong._

_Lucius didn't know what it was. There wasn't enough left of him to be curious, or to wonder why and how and what. He was slate too, you see, a crumbling, thin stone without enough behind it to hold it up. Yet something within him mourned and grieved, bewailing this mistake, this error he'd made._

_Of course, if he'd learned what it was that made him feel uneasily ill, he would have scoffed and sneered in proper fashion. It was contrary to what he'd learned to perceive as right or wrong. To feel that slaying hope was wrong? No, it was a matter of course, it came before brushing one's teeth, and after dessert. But the part of him that remembered baring his soul to Narcissa, kissing her, the part that was still in love with her; that part was torn._

_He ignored it, naturally, and unless one had a good deal of money to wave around, it was intensely difficult to attract Lucius Malfoy's attention. For he was a man concerned with matters of consequence. Like breaking souls, and counting gold._

_It was all the same to him, you see. All the same shade of slate-cold grey._

            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -

Malfoy stared at the empty tray. Blaise had, indeed, managed to make him eat all the breakfast there, but the pancakes sat like sheets of clay in him, and his stomach felt heavy and cold. _[Must be eating all that at once.]_ Malfoy swallowed hard. Forget clay; the food he'd eaten seemed almost animated, felt like it was trying to crawl back up his throat.

He had only a moment's warning before he was forced to sprint for the lavatory.

He didn't think he'd thrown it all up; on the contrary, he felt as greasy and cold inside as he had before. But his breakfast was no longer trying to jailbreak. He washed his mouth out, and spat into the sink. _[And Blaise will think I tried to. Great.]_

Malfoy had never been quite so overcome with apathy as he was that day; he was perfectly content to lie still and stare at the ceiling for hours without complaint. Well, perhaps "content" wasn't quite the word for it. His brain just didn't seem to be functioning. Madame Pomfrey thought it was terrible, like watching a person who had fallen into a coma with their eyes open, but ever the sternly grandmotherly soul, she never spoke a word about it to Malfoy. It had happened to him before, this feeling that there was nothing quite worth moving _[living]_ for, but then Potter had always come along and he had been forced to think of something sharp and cruel to spit at him.

But then, then, his world had crumbled down around him then, and he felt no great urge to fix it. That day, he felt more like remaining still in bed than moving, like lying motionless than breathing. His life had cracked apart at the seams, and this time, he simply couldn't bring himself to fight the storm.

_  
And the lightning strikes, and the wind cuts cold  
Through the sailor's bones, through the sailor's soul,  
'Til there's nothing left that he can hold,  
Except a rolling ocean . . .  
  
_


End file.
